We are born to kiss and be kissed. It comes natural to us, as marriage does to a woman. Why, sir, I can remember kissing the female babies when I was yet in my cradle, and my friend Sir Thomas Lawrence did himself the honor to paint me at my favorite pursuit, as you know by that exquisite picture in my library. The very first day I went to school I kissed all the sweet little angels there. I wasn’t fairly out of my alphabet, when I used to wait behind a pump, for my sweetheart to come out of school, and as soon as I saw her I made a point of kissing her just to see how prettily she blushed. As I grew older I loved to steal in, some summer evening, on her, and kiss her asleep on the sofa—or, if she was awake, and the old folks were by, I’d wait till they both got nodding, and then kiss her all the sweeter for the slyness of the thing. Ah! such stolen draughts are delicious. I wouldn’t give a sous to kiss a girl in company, and I always hated Copenhagen, Pawns, and your other kissing plays, as I hope I hate the devil. They had a shocking custom when I was young, that everybody at a wedding should kiss the bride, just as they all drank, in the same free and easy way, out of the one big china punch-bowl; but the practice always hurt my sensibilities, and I avoided weddings as I would avoid a ghost, a bailiff, or any other fright. No—no—get your little charmer up into a corner by yourselves—watch when everybody’s back is turned—then slip your arm around her waist, and kiss her with a long sweet kiss, as if you were a bee sucking honey from a flower. Nor can one kiss every girl. I’d as lief take ipecacuanha as kiss some of your sharp-chinned, icicle-mouthed, lignum-vitæ-faced spinsters—why one couldn’t get the taste of the bitters out of his mouth for a week! I go in for your rosy, pouting lips, that seem to challenge everybody so saucily—egad! when we kiss such at our leisure, we think we’re in a seventh heaven. I once lived on such a kiss for forty-eight hours, for it took the taste for commoner food out of my mouth “intirely,” as poor Power used to say. Oh! how I loved the wide, dark entries one finds in old mansions, where one could catch these saucy little fairies, and, before they were well aware of your presence, kiss them so deliciously. There’s kissing for you! Or, to go upon a sleigh ride, and when all, save you and your partner, are busy chatting—while the merry ringing of the bells and the whizzing motion of the vehicle cause your spirits to dance for very joy—to make believe that you wish to arrange the buffalo, or pull her shawl up closer around her, and then slyly stealing your face into her bonnet to kiss her for an instant of ecstasy, while she blushes to the very temples, lest others may catch you at your sport. And then, on a summer eve, to row out upon the bosom of a moonlit lake, and while one of the ladies sings and all the rest listen, to snatch a chance and laughingly